Seriously, this is a moment of gaming history for me. He's one of the most skilled and mysterious figures at least in 90s gaming, and he's the major driving force of one of my all-time favorite games. This interview provides more from him than the last 20 years combined.

Arl wrote:Regarding the Daggerfall source code part of the interview, I wonder: what would it mean for DF Unity if the source code gets available right now?

I haven't seen interview yet, so possibly responding without context here. Daggerfall Unity is so far along right now, with only one major system remaining, that Daggerfall's source code wouldn't change much at this stage. But it would still be useful to solve a few unknowns.

If you're thinking of others building something similar, keep in mind that Daggerfall's source code is still just straight Daggerfall. All the other stuff Daggerfall Unity has brought along won't be easily substituted. For example, smoother controls and timings, modability in a massive engine with millions of users, the new JIT-compiled quest system with plain-text scripts, scriptable spell effects, and so on. It's all the value added above just playing the base game that sets Daggerfall Unity apart from a straight source port.

He had some clever thoughts about immersiveness and uniqueness in a game that would probably be highlight contributions. But he said he remembers almost nothing about how Daggerfall works. If he thought hard, he might be able to remember something.

If he came around to add some finishing touches later on, I think that would be awesome You're likely the most Daggerfall-literate person on the planet right now, though I don't know enough about Allofich to say that with certainty.

Yeah, Allofich is scary-good at picking apart the old .exe and file formats. I'm not bad at this myself, but nothing on that guy. Definitely wouldn't have made it this far so quickly without his help on formulas and much more.

Arl wrote:Regarding the Daggerfall source code part of the interview, I wonder: what would it mean for DF Unity if the source code gets available right now?

I haven't seen interview yet, so possibly responding without context here. Daggerfall Unity is so far along right now, with only one major system remaining, that Daggerfall's source code wouldn't change much at this stage. But it would still be useful to solve a few unknowns.

If you're thinking of others building something similar, keep in mind that Daggerfall's source code is still just straight Daggerfall. All the other stuff Daggerfall Unity has brought along won't be easily substituted. For example, smoother controls and timings, modability in a massive engine with millions of users, the new JIT-compiled quest system with plain-text scripts, scriptable spell effects, and so on. It's all the value added above just playing the base game that sets Daggerfall Unity apart from a straight source port.

Yes, the first thing you responded is what I was wondering, what would happen to DFU in regards to the development. I'm glad that the current stage of things allows you to confidently be fine without the source code.

This year has been a blast of progress and goodies for DFU, this is the farthest any reincarnation attempt of Daggerfall has ever gotten, and I was very interested in knowing if Julian was aware of this, but it seems that he only knew about DaggerXL.

Arl wrote:
This year has been a blast of progress and goodies for DFU, this is the farthest any reincarnation attempt of Daggerfall has ever gotten, and I was very interested in knowing if Julian was aware of this, but it seems that he only knew about DaggerXL.

Thanks!

That second part is a shame, but can't have everything. Doing the work is what matters most.